Build your brand as a sports DC
3 sports DCs advise how to make your mark
By Rich Smith

No athlete — pro, collegiate, or weekend warrior — is ever satisfied with his or her performance.

Every athlete insatiably craves a better score, faster time, or longer distance.

Accordingly, athletes are flocking in record numbers to chiropractors. In particular, they are seeking the services of chiropractors with expertise in sports-performance enhancement.

And not just for increased prowess, but also for help in avoiding injury (or achieving faster recovery).

Clearly, a focus on athletics represents a strong niche opportunity for chiropractors looking to boost their practice revenues and profitability.

Three doctors who successfully built their brand as sports chiropractic go-to professionals in their respective markets are:

• Sheila Wilson, DC, CCSP, ICSSD, owner of Georgetown Chiropractic in Indianapolis, Ind., (Wilson is also president of the American Chiropractic Association Sports Council);

• Ted Forcum, DC, DACBSP, FICC, CSCS, owner of Back in Motion Sports Injuries Clinic in Beaverton, Ore.; and

• Valli Gambina, DC, owner of Chiropractic Sports Medicine in Venice, Fla.

GOOD ADVICE

Building a successful sports chiropractic practice involves four basic steps, according to these professionals. They require you to:

• Tailor your treatment armamentarium to the needs of today’s athletes;

• Obtain credentialing in sports chiropractic;

• Aggressively market your sports capabilities to referrers and consumers; and

• Develop a passion for sports, in general, and athleticism, in particular.

TAILOR YOUR TREATMENT ARMAMENTARIUM

Among health professions, chiropractic is the best equipped for identifying and addressing biomechanical problems — those which can prevent an athlete from achieving his or her unique potential.

Sports chiropractic can produce athletes who are free of mechanical dysfunction and therefore able to experience greater range of motion, flexibility, and coordination. Whether sinking a putt from 25 feet or passing the ball from midfield to the end zone straight into the running back’s hands, the absence of dysfunction makes tight, crisp, precision body movements significantly easier to execute.

The much-referenced 1991 Lauro and Mouch study (published in The Journal of Chiropractic Research and Clinical Investigation) found that two weeks of chiropractic care can be sufficient to boost an athlete’s performance by nearly 17 percent.

Forcum is familiar with that study, and believes optimal gains from sports chiropractic require having a well-rounded armamentarium of treatment tools. Forcum, for example, took the necessary training about five years ago to augment traditional chiropractic care with soft-tissue treatment methods — chiefly, instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilization technology to resolve motion-restricting scar tissues and fascial adhesions known to play havoc with athletes.

“Rarely do I see a patient in which there is no soft tissue component,” adds Forcum, who specializes in treating sports injuries of the lower extremities and feet.

Wilson, who is also trained in soft-tissue and low-force techniques, prefers cutting-edge approaches of this sort because they help her achieve faster, better results with less-tiring exertion. “Athletes want to see improvement in themselves yesterday,” she explains. “Because of that, you can’t afford to spend time on treatments unless they are evidence-based and dramatically effective.”

Gambina knows for a fact that offering instrument-assisted soft-tissue mobilization (IASTM) has boosted her referral base. “Athletes look for noninvasive treatment options, and because of this, many of our referrals come from orthopedics whose patients want a nonsurgical treatment to resolve their injury.”

OBTAIN CREDENTIALING IN SPORTS CHIROPRACTIC

A doctor of chiropractic need not add the CCSP (certified chiropractic sports physician) credential nor the even more advanced DACBSP (diplomate of the American Chiropractic Board of Sports Physicians) designation in order to be qualified to treat athletes.

But those epaulets do help. A lot.

“They convey to the world that you have a higher level of knowledge and training in sports care,” says Forcum, who explains earning his DACBSP required him to undertake 200 hours of additional postgraduate education (on top of the 100 needed originally for his CCSP) in subjects pertaining to sports; pass two different exams; and author a sports-oriented research paper for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Gambina is in the process of obtaining her CCSP and DACBSP. “There aren’t a lot of sports-credentialed chiropractors, so being credentialed is a key way to differentiate yourself and your practice from others in your market,” she says.

That’s how Wilson sees it. “Additional credentials in sports chiropractic are practice-builders, no question about it,” she says. “The extra designations attract many more patients than might otherwise be the case.”

AGGRESSIVELY MARKET YOUR SPORTS CAPABILITIES

A Thomson Medstat survey last year of 23,000 adults found more than one-third of U.S. households depend on some form of alternative medicine, with chiropractic being the No. 1 choice.

The survey also noted the higher the household’s income and education level, the more likely it was to be an enthusiastic user of alternative medicine.

That, of course, is good news for chiropractors generally, but even more so for sports-specialized doctors, since higher household income and education generally go hand-in-glove with greater participation in athletics.

Still, even with the advantage of favorable demographics, patients won’t come to your field-of-dreams practice simply because you’ve built it. “It’s a mistake to think business is going to fall into your lap,” says Forcum. “You’ve got to do things that make it happen.”

In short, promotion is key.

Forcum’s outreach strategy revolves, in part, around the staging of prerace clinics for marathon runners. He also delivers upbeat, inspirational presentations to athletes at schools and clubs.

Other advice:

• Forge solid working relationships. Concentrate on developing relationships with orthopedic surgeons and other MDs who provide sports medicine services. From this effort, you should be able to build a healthy referral stream, suggests Gambina.

• Get involved in sports organizations. Join as many local, regional, and national sports organizations and participate in events.

According to Gambina, involvement in these types of organizations and events increases her exposure to emergency medicine and allows her to work alongside all healthcare disciplines in the sports medicine paradigm.

“The experience I gain from these events is then applied to my clinical practice, allowing my patients to benefit from state-of-the-art rehabilitation procedures,” she says.

• Toot your own horn. Issue press releases to your local news outlets — newspapers, radio and TV stations, and Internet bloggers and podcasters.

Inform the media about your involvement in sports care, plus about upcoming events in which you’ll be a participant. Disseminate these same messages, as appropriate, to existing and prospective patients and referrers by using other channels, including your Web site, flyers, brochures, and direct-mailers.

DEVELOP A PASSION FOR SPORTS

Wilson, Forcum, and Gambina decided to make the care of athletes their clinical focus, not merely because of the practice growth and income potential it embodies, but because they happen to love sports.

Look at Wilson. Her affair-of-the-heart with games of strength and agility dates back to childhood. Later, in chiropractic school, she became active in the sports injury-management club. And, once in practice, some of her earliest patients were athletes.

“If you do what you love, you’ll have a passion for it,” she says. “And, if you’re passionate about your work, people will see that and become excited by it. People are naturally attracted to other people who have a passion in life — especially a passion they have in common; sports, for instance.”

The final score? Athletes today are more performance-minded than ever. They want to play harder, stay in the game longer, and execute their moves more spectacularly. To gain all this, many are willing to do whatever it takes.

Those in the know are already doing what it takes by seeing a chiropractor.

Those who aren’t yet in the know, will be — as soon as they hear from you and pay a visit to your office. 

Rich Smith is a freelance journalist based in Yucca Valley, Calif. He writes frequently on healthcare people, technology, techniques, trends, and issues.